Pat Rollins: Portable bobhouse gets the thumbs up

Tuesday

Jan 29, 2013 at 3:15 AM

For years I couldn’t wait for the ice to freeze on my favorite cove so I could push my bobhouse out and get it set up. Every weekend my buddies and I would head out and set out one tip-up for lake trout and retreat to the warm confines of the shanty to jig for perch, cusk and the occasional laker. Now-a-days, that bobhouse sits behind my house as we’ve become mobile, opting to fish a variety of locations from a portable bobhouse with my family.

The first time I took my son ice fishing on a small perch pond not far from our home I realized that the store bought portable bobhouse that I’d been using just wouldn’t cut it when my wife and daughter joined us. It was perfect for two fishermen; ideal for myself and a fidgety youngster. However, when the four of us headed out for a day long fishing trip to the Big Lake, the shanty was too crowded for anybody to fish inside.

It only took one trip for me to start thinking about how I could create a light, easy to set up portable shanty that we could slide out on the ice and comfortably fish from. A week or two later I was in the wood shop making my plans a reality.

I began by stripping an old pair of my wife’s skis and attaching a foot-tall wooden frame on each ski. After that, I built a five-foot long storage box out of plywood that measured 18 inches wide and 18 inches deep.

I put a hinged lid on the box, fastened it to the frame work I’d attached to the skis before I turned my attention to the walls and ceiling. For that, I bent some ¾ inch aluminum piping to form five foot sides and a five foot wide roof. The frame work slips together in four sections that slide into collars that I attached on the back corners of the storage box.

With one on each end of the sled, I built a five foot long brace that attaches three feet up on the front side to hold the two ends together. After that, I turned to my mother-in-law and asked her to cut and sew some tarp material to create a tent to cover the frame.

It took some doing and I’m sure she called me a few names, however, she was able to come up with the perfect cover that is easy to slid onto the frame. She even added a long wide window in the front side that she made from a piece of real heavy soft clear plastic. She also sewed a long heavy gauge zipper on one end for a door.

All I had to do was paint the box and add a good sturdy tow rope and my portable bobhouse was complete. It has plenty of storage for the frame work and tent cover as well as our tip-ups, jigging rods and bait bucket in addition to a propane heater and bottle of gas.

When the project was completed, we couldn’t wait to try it out, so we loaded it up and headed for a Big Lake cove to see what we could do.

It was easy to pull out on the ice and once we reached our destination my wife and daughter had no problem setting the frame in place. My son and I followed with the tenting and within ten minutes the gas heater was running and we were pushing it over a a line of four holes.

Before heading in to try jigging, we quickly set out a tip-up for each of us. My wife sounded bottom after I cut the holes with my auger. The kids followed behind with an ice scoop, cleaning out the holes and setting the lines three feet off the bottom with live bait.

“Let’s get in where it’s warm,” my daughter insisted as she rubbed her hands together.

We all stepped inside and took a seat on the storage box and my wife poured some hot chocolate as I baited a jig and sent it down one of the holes. When it hit bottom she flipped the bail closed and brought it about a foot off bottom and before she got a sip of the hot beverage I watched her rod tip begin to bounce.

“Gilly, you’ve got a fish,” my wife shouted. “Reel it in.”

She made short work of bringing a decent foot long white perch through the hole. Moments later, my son was reaching for his rod.

Before our day was done, the kids had caught three white perch and more than a dozen yellow perch. We did have one flag, however, whatever struck the bait was gone by the time we reached the tip-up.

When we were taking our bobhouse down, Ian turned to me and said , “This bobhouse works real well.”

“Daddy, I think it’s good, too,” my daughter added with a smile and a thumbs up.